Bronwen Knox was forced into homelessness to chase Tokyo Olympic dream
Former Australian Olympic star Bronwen Knox has revealed the incredible sacrifice she made to keep her dream of becoming Australia’s first four-time women’s water polo Olympian alive. Details inside.
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Four-time Australian Olympian Bronwen Knox revealed she resorted to living out of her car to save enough money to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
The Queenslander is one of Australia’s most decorated water polo representatives, winning two bronze medals at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics and amassing nearly 400 international caps.
That incredible success came at tremendous personal cost, including going without a fixed address during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The charity of friends and relatives kept a roof over Knox’s head while officially homeless.
Speaking at the launch of the Sports Gold Coast Grow For Gold initiative - which will grant four aspiring Gold Coast Olympians $10,000 per year for seven years in the lead-up to the 2032 Games - Knox shed light on her shocking personal experience to outline the challenges some Olympians face to chase their dreams and why financial support is crucial for many.
“I played 399 games for Australia ... from 18 years old to 35 and in my last year, I made the financial decision to not rent anywhere because I couldn’t afford it,” she said.
“I couldn’t afford work because we were full-time athletes, we trained six hours a day, plus meetings, plus everything else and there was just no time to work on top of that.
“So then the easiest decision was to put everything in storage and put everything I needed in my car and rely on friends and family’s couches during Covid.”
Due to Covid restrictions at the time, this proved unsustainable for Knox and she was forced to move out of a friends’ home due to her friend’s partner working as a nurse.
However, the Australian Stingers star refused to throw in the towel and was determined to make the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and become Australia’s first four-time Olympian in the women’s water polo.
“Trying to work out where I was going to stay week-to-week, it was really difficult,” Knox said.
“Our training continued to move from the Sunshine Coast, to Gold Coast, to Northern New South Wales, back to Queensland and just continuing to move around.
“I was averaging $25,000 a year for 17 years, I didn’t have any super, I had a little bit of savings, I had $60,000 in HECS debt that was continuing to grow.
“I was lacking some skill development because I could never worked jobs that allowed professional development or evolution.
“It was often short contracts going overseas, coming back, finding new work, going back overseas, doing an Olympic prep - which takes 12 months of our time now.
“So leading to Tokyo which I knew was going to be my last because I couldn’t afford to be under financial stress this much for this long, I decided that my car was a better option.
“Luckily I never had to sleep out of my car or anything but there were times when I rented a couple of days in a motel that I was very nervous.
“I boarded up my door because I should not have stayed there but I had no where else to go. My family had moved out of state, the borders were closing or were difficult to go across.”
Eventually Knox received financial support which helped ease her burden in her quest for her Olympic swan song.
“I was lucky that around May, someone came along and gave me a little bit of funding to find a place to have a base and that just gave me a breath of fresh air to really just enjoy the final moments of preparation and leading to the Olympic Games,” she said.
Originally published as Bronwen Knox was forced into homelessness to chase Tokyo Olympic dream
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